As Internet access becomes more popular, software products and media are more frequently being transferred and sold via the Internet instead of through physical media such as CDs and DVDs. Often times, a sender (or seller) can transfer files to a recipient (or buyer) through one or more networks. The files are grouped and compressed into a single package called a file container (or archive file) for ease of use. One popular archive file format is the PKZIP file format developed by PKWARE. This file format is informally known as “zip archives” or “zip files”. A ZIP archive is made up of a set of files and a central directory. The central directory includes many records that each store file attributes essential to the operation of the ZIP archive. Each record can identify the location of a file in the ZIP archive along with attributes on the compression or encryption algorithm applied to the file, if any. In practice, bytes of undefined data are disbursed throughout the ZIP archive and as a result the central directory serves as a map to locate and order the plurality of files. The central directory can also include information to verify the integrity of the content in the ZIP archive. For these reasons, ZIP archives need to be received in their entirety before the data stored in the ZIP archive can be decompressed and accessed.
Using a ZIP file container can have certain drawbacks. For example, network resources can be wasted if an interrupt is received during transmission of a ZIP file container. The interruption can be due to a power outage or a network failure. Since the architecture of the ZIP file container requires that the container be received in its entirety before the data within the container is accessible, the received portion of the ZIP file container can be unusable depending on the file format. In some situations, the ZIP file container must be retransmitted to the user thus resulting in wasted bandwidth. As another example, the processing time of a ZIP file container can be overly long since the entire ZIP file container must be downloaded before the data stored in the container can be processed and accessed. This is especially true in situations where the ZIP file container is large in size. Processing a ZIP file container and writing its contents in their original form to disk requires significant disk space in addition to that consumed by the ZIP file container itself. Thus, there is a need for improved techniques for the transmission of ZIP file containers.